He was opposite the theatre again as the crowds emerged when the play finished sometime after ten. They passed by him chatting, laughing, hailing taxis. He watched the doors, the lights go off, the poster boards taken indoors. A couple of men he took to be technicians strolled by him to the pub. An actress, still dabbing make-up from her face with a tissue, stood on the sidewalk and sneezed.

“Bless you,” said Jack.

“My God,” she said, “it’s you.”

“I was just wondering was Catherine about?”

“She’s gone.”

“Oh.”

She rushed away. Then the street went quiet. He began to search the nearby pubs.

That search ended as the pubs closed. Then he set off towards the last address that Catherine had given him. He did not want to go there as that seemed like a breach of trust. To meet her by chance was acceptable, to go to her home was wrong. Yet he could not stop himself. By now he had perfected the walk he had established in hospital. The intent gait that bore the impatience of a relentless search. The obsessive drive through psychological terrain. The disturbed soul was on the move again.

His fingers working themselves in his pockets. His socks sliding in his shoes. The manic breathing. The lights from cars and traffic lights blinding him.

When suddenly he came to a stop he found that he had long ago walked past the house. He stopped, bewildered by the fact that he had gone so far out of his way. He turned and went back again. When he eventually reached the red-brick two-storey house in a side street off the South Circular Road he stood for a moment unsure of himself. He knocked on the door. A curtain was drawn overhead and a face came to the window. Then the curtain quickly fell into place again. “Catherine,” he called out. He heard voices in the hallway. Steps, whispers. All the quiet insignificant sounds that paranoia feeds upon. “Catherine,” he called again. He listened for as long as he could bear then he walked off down Camden Street, feeling that he had at least discharged a psychic duty that was expected of him.

The long drunkenness was nearly over. Now began the long insane journey into sobriety. For what, he wondered, had he survived?